I am Kin Lane, the API Evangelist...

This is my online domain where I work to understand the world of the Application Programming Interfaces, also known as APIs. This new way of sharing data using the web is touching almost every aspect of our increasingly digital lives, providing access to the bits and bytes that make our personal and professional worlds go round.

This is my research specifically into how integrated developer environments (IDE) are being used as part of the API lifecycle, providing developers with access to API related resources within the environment they are already using.

API Evangelist is a network of data driven projects and APIs which I curate and manage as part of this ongoing research, hoping to provide easy access to the moving parts of my work. Everything you see here runs on Github, making everything forkable, and reusable for both humans and machines.

API Evangelist Partners

These are my partners who invest in API Evangelist each month, helping underwrite my research, and making sure I'm able to keep monitoring the API space as I do.

Efficiently turn APIs into real-time experiences, using a proxy-as-a-service that turns any request-answer API into real-time event-driven data feeds without a line of server-side code.

Latest From Blog on API IDE: Google And AWS APIs Available In Visual Studio And Eclipse IDEs

25 Apr 2017

I'm always learning from the API pioneers, and trying to understand how they are pushing forward the API conversation. I'm neck deep in profiling AWS APIs, as well as Google APIs. One common pattern I'm seeing across both providers is the support for API access in both Visual Studio and Eclipse IDEs.

Amazon also provides Eclipse and Visual Studio tooling as part of their AWS toolbox. Opening up access the AWS API catalog to developers in the IDE they are are using to build their applications and craft their system integrations. I don't know how much time you've spent looking through the AWS catalog, but it can be a timesucker--giving me access to APIs in my native environment makes a lot sense.

I feel like API innovation in the IDE is right there with API integration into our continuous integration workflows, and the usage of Github. You should haven't to depend on Google to find your APIs, they should be right at your fingertips in your IDE, no matter whether they are for your applications, or for managing your API operations. All your internal, and 3rd party APIs should be baked into your development, and continuous integration environments, allowing you to orchestrate exactly the application experience, and life cycle you desire. This is just one of the fronts I'd like to see API discovery evolve in coming years, reaching developers with new APIs and paths during design and development, as well as across continuous integration stages of our work.

API IDE News

These are the news items I've curated in my monitoring of the API space that have some relevance to the API definition conversation and I wanted to include in my research. I'm using all of these links to better understand how the space is testing their APIs, going beyond just monitoring and understand the details of each request and response.

If you think there is a link I should have listed here feel free to tweet it at me, or submit as a Github issue. Even though I do this full time, I'm still a one person show, and I miss quite a bit, and depend on my network to help me know what is going on.

API IDE Organizations

These are the organizations I come across in my research who are doing interesting things in the API space. They could be companies, institutions, government agencies, or any other type of organizational entity. My goal is to aggregate so I can stay in tune with what they are up to and how it impacts the API space.

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core.

Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs for Microsoft Windows, as well as web sites, web applications and web services. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Store and Microsoft Silverlight. It can produce both native code and managed code.

If you think there is an organization I should have listed here feel free to tweet it at me, or submit as a Github issue. Even though I do this full time, I'm still a one person show, and I miss quite a bit, and depend on my network to help me know what is going on.

API IDE Tooling

As I study each API, and API related service, I'm always looking for open source tooling that has been developed around each area of the API life cycle. This is an aggregate of tooling I've come across and aggregated as part of my API testing research.

The Atom Editor API Blueprint preview is a plugin for the Atom editor that allows you to render HTML representation of API Blueprint in the right of the current open Atom editor using CTRL-SHIFT-A. This plugin requires Agilou to be installed and available in your path.

If there is a tool that you think should be listed here, let me know by submitting a Github issue or Tweeting a link at me. I'm always looking for new types of tools, and get better at organizing them here and making sense.

API IDE Building Blocks

As I study the API space, and profile the companies, services, and tooling I come across I'm always looking for the common building blocks in use across API operations. These are derived the features, and valuable elements of API operations, and the companies who are servicing this particular area of the API space.

Awareness

Resources - What API focused resources are available within an IDE environment. How do developers find documentation, and other resources that support them in their integrations.

Analytics - What analytics are available to support API integrations, during development? Is the ability to track and measure API related integrations during design and development time.

Backend

Worker - Are there options for creating specific works, that allow specific API integrations to be established, and run in isolation as specific workers or jobs.

Container - Are there options to be able to containerize individual API integrations, isolating them into specific virtualized instances.

Configuration

Editor(s) - Are there options for multiple editors, depending on media or file type, or possible set per project and environment levels, within the IDE.

Themes - Are there theme options, allowing the environment, workspace, and projects to be custom defined by stored themes.

Extending

Github - Using Github as a source for code, templates, definitions, and other essential building blocks of the API development process, in a modern IDE.

Plugins - Does the IDE environment allow for plugins, and extending the environment? Plugins allow for the introduction of 3rd party tools and services into the IDE workspace.

Customize - Are there options for customizing the IDE, from look and feel, to the functionality.

Workbench

Workspace - Workspace definition tooling and services, allowing APIs to be an integrated part of the IDE workspaces, either by default or custom addition.

Environment - Is there the option for establishing separate environments within an IDE. Are developers able to segment and group their API integrations into multiple environments.

Autocomplete - One of the hallmark features of an IDE, is autocomplete for specific languages and frameworks. In this scenario autocomplete is focused on dictionaries created by API definitions, meant for specific integrations.

These building blocks are constantly being added to and reorganized. If there is something you think should be here feel free to let me know. Remember that this represents my living research, and will evolve, expand and actually seed new research areas as I find the time to pay attention to API testing.

About This Research

As I keep an eye on the space I curate news, bookmark organizations, watch interesting tools, and work to understand what deployment solutions are being applied by leading API providers. I take everything I find and publish here as part of my research.

I then take this research, and what I've learned and publish stories on the blog, and more long form content like my industry guides, and white papers for customers. This is one way that I generate revenue to keep it all going.

If you'd like to see me focus more on APIs & IDEs I could use more partners investing in this area, helping me find the time to study more about what is going on. Feel free to contact me directly if you want to talk more about APIs & IDEs.